Paper short abstract:

In a "difficult" mixed neighborhood of wider Tunis, I compare the complex dynamics of co-presence with the pre-packaged democratic training repertoires of hope through dialogue. Counter-intuitively to liberal aspirations and techniques, I argue that this co-presence is more politically potent.

Paper long abstract:

In the widely demonized “sha’bi” (poor, densely inhabited) borough of Hay Ettadhamun, the heavy hand of Ben Ali’s police state was partly lifted in 2011, only to be joined by the softer touch of international aid architecture. Such architecture promoted the training of local residents in dispassionate ‘dialogue’ for the purpose of ‘conflict resolution’. As in numerous other contexts, this security and democracy promotion nexus envisioned an intimate intervention into the everyday conflicts largely wrought by colonial, nationalist authoritarian, and currently neoliberal political configurations. Among these conflicts were physical confrontations between salafi youth and their equally young ideological opponents over the regulation of resident movement, behaviour, and modes of communication. Based on participant observation inside a small neighbourhood NGO staging a persistent contra-puntal presence in the otherwise salafi-controlled terrain of a specific “huma”(neighborhood), this presentation compares the complex dynamics of co-presence with the pre-packaged democratic training repertoires of hope for conflict resolution through dialogue. The presentation argues that, counter-intuitively to the liberal aspirations and techniques of engendering a moderate deliberating public, this tense 'unresolved' co-presence sustains a joint experience of socio-economic marginalization in Tunisia that is extremely potent: 1) By pointing the finger at the continuous state neglect of marginalized Tunisians, this tense togetherness amplifies an otherwise silenced critique of the various foreclosures of (neo)liberal democratic consolidation 2) It intervenes in the time narrative of liberal democratic transition reconfiguring, among other things, the relationship between revolution and democracy. This relationship appears as non-consecutive, but, rather, as overlapping.